THE FOUR SEASONS By Angus MacInnes

THE FOUR SEASONS By Angus MacInnes

"From 2001 - 2008 the prolific Scottish artist Angus MacInnes was a firm fixture on eBay, posting dozens of new paintings each week. One of the first artists to list works under the category ‘self-representing artist’, MacInnes capitalized on his Scottishness to secure the loyal patronage of the global Scots diaspora. In 2002, MacInnes became a popular ‘Power Seller’, his abstract and figurative paintings having become famous within a nascent international market distinct from both avant-garde and middlebrow gallery networks.

Today, many MacInnes paintings form a ghostly presence online, haunting secondary market auctions and amateur art collector’s websites. Much of his oeuvre can still be observed via a simple Google search for ‘Angus MacInnes, artist’.

In 2014, a reclusive and reinvigorated Angus MacInnes came out of retirement at the invitation of Hour Projects (Copenhagen) and Third Eye Center (Edinburgh), to produce a new body of paintings inspired by his five-star tour of Africa.

A cult figure in his native Scotland, MacInnes divides critical opinion. A few believe that his paintings are patronising potboilers that have no artistic merit whatsoever. Many more are committed fans of his energetic and colourful evocations of Scotland’s magnificent topography. Some regard his oeuvre as a significant postnet intervention into the distributive aesthetics and economies of diaspora. One thing is certain: The Four Seasons catalogue and the African Affair exhibition produced for The Third Eye Center in Edinburgh are among some of MacInnes’ finest works. His work mixes a painterly maturity with an hallucinogenic and kaleidoscopic reverence for composition that is equaled by so few in the checkered history of Scottish Art"